


Tonight I Wanna Cry

by jen_misbehaving



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:43:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jen_misbehaving/pseuds/jen_misbehaving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas attends Dean's wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tonight I Wanna Cry

Cas doesn't know whether he wants to laugh or cry or just try to rip his own heart out. It doesn't matter. Nothing would help just now. He vaguely wishes he had the strength to be bitter because that at least would be a release. But right now all he feels is terrible pain, as if his heart is being slowly taken apart and removed in pieces. He should have known. He should have known all along. That seems to hurt the most right now, the sheer weight of his own stupidity in falling in love with somebody who would never return it. It all seems so preventable in hindsight.

 _Dean Winchester loves someone else._ That's all there is to it. That's the end of Cas's world. The place where all his hope was stored up has died and there's no getting it back. Of all of his father's creations, Cas wonders why he has to be the stupidest one. How fitting that the man he would fall for would fall for someone else.

As big a hangover as he has this morning, he can't quite bring himself to regret emptying half a bottle of whiskey before bed. It was the only thing that could have made him sleep the night before Dean's wedding.

He hasn't worn a tie in a while, but today he's wearing a blue one similar to the one Jimmy used to wear. He still can't tie it right and it ends up all backwards. Oh, well. Either Dean or Sam will fix it for him. He pulls on his trench coat over his suit jacket, grateful for at least that to hide behind. Cas can still feel the searing pain in his chest and a crying spell is on its way. He just hopes he can make it through today.

Cas drives to the chapel in the car that's made him the butt of jokes from practically everyone but Sam. Before getting out he stops to take a few deep breaths; he's not at all sure he has the strength for this. He stays too long apparently, because Sam knocks on the passenger side window and he exits the car then. Sam's eyes are far too understanding and Cas's own eyes start prickling. He blinks hard and fast to clear them and Sam pretends not to notice.

“Am I late?” Cas asks.

“Nope. The lovebirds aren't here yet. Here, let me fix your tie.” It feels strange to have it hang straight. “Did you get here okay?” Sam asks, because he can't ask the one he wants to. _How are you? Are you okay?_

“I'm still breathing.” _No. I don't think so._

This tortured form of communication stops abruptly as Dean and Heather pull up in the Impala. _She's beautiful. You have to admit that. She's beautiful._ It's the first time Cas has seen her outside her hunter gear and it's no wonder Dean chose her. Cas has to stop himself wondering, and not for the first time, if things would be different if he'd taken a female vessel. He's determined not to think of _what-ifs_ today, not while Dean's getting married.

There are a total of eight people present at the wedding. Dean and Heather, Sam and his girlfriend Addy, Heather's brother Richard and his wife Rachel, the man officiating, and Cas all standing close to the altar. This is a wedding for hunters, small and simple. It's fitting somehow. All in all, the ceremony only lasts fifteen minutes.

They spend the next hour in a restaurant by way of a reception. It's not much, but it's good enough and they're all together. Cas is the last to leave, as if the noise and the people can stop the hole in his chest from spreading. But nothing can fix it now, not now that Dean is gone, and it had all been so quick.

The drive back to his hotel room is a slow one. It feels like his soul is on fire and he might have to throw up soon. He didn't expect the reaction to be so physical. As he carries the half-empty bottle of whiskey over to the bed, it seems he's put off the tears so long they have trouble coming now. Cas turns on the radio, looking for something, anything, that could help lift this terrible pressure off of him. The song that warbles out to him is one that Dean would probably laugh at. Some country song about a breakup. It doesn't matter what it's about, really, because it's close enough. Cas has never cried before, not like this. He's never sobbed before, never wanted to cease to exist.

 _At least I'm human now._ He can't help but laugh a little bitterly at that. The thought should not be as comforting as it is. _I'm human now and I'll die one day and it'll be over. Thank God._ After all, he's died for Dean many times. What's one more?


	2. Hallelujah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a year after Dean's wedding and Cas is working a case on his own.

It's fine most days. He finds the burden of the constant ache lighter than he expected, but Cas supposes one can't always feel made of lead. And some days he manages to only think about Dean a handful of times. Cas gets along just fine, even if the love or the pain haven't lessened in the year everything in his life has been made redundant.

The case he's working this week is a vampire family of three wreaking havoc in a small Tennessee town. He should have backup, but who exactly would he call for that? Sam is strictly a Man of Letters now and Dean … Well, Dean is just out of the question. So it's down to just him, like it always has been.

His motel room is practically covered in pictures and maps and notes. They're stupid enough to have left fourteen bodies lying around a town of less than two thousand, and like a beacon of light in the darkness, it's extremely noticeable. They are, however, smart enough to have remained mostly unobserved, except for one ten-year-old boy and one nosy neighbor catching glimpses. Cas knows they're here, it's just a matter of finding them.

He gets a break at a Gas 'N Sip, of all places, in the form of a rather loud woman telling her friend about a very creepy man trying to bite her in a bar before being dragged off by two of his friends. One very awkward conversation later, Cas has a description of all three of them. Armed with this information, it doesn't take long to track one of them down in one of the bars they frequent at night. At somewhere around two in the morning the vamp starts to leave with a 20-something blonde in his wake. Cas follows them out of the building and into the alley, noticing two shadows that suddenly appear and lag behind the vamp and the blonde. _Good. All three of them are here._ Cas knows he has to act quickly to get the young woman out of danger, so he does the only stupid, reckless thing he can think of.

“Hey, assbutt! Bite me!” Cas throws his angel blade – at least he still has that – through the nearest vamp's neck. Cas doesn't even have to tell the young woman to run, seeing a blade make a sizable hole in someone is enough to set her feet in any direction away from here. At least the other two vamps – a redhead and a sour-looking 30-something in a leather jacket – are pissed off enough not to go after her. Cas lunges to the ground to avoid the redhead now barreling through the air at him and manages to roll away from Leather Jacket just in time. He somehow gets to the vamp gurgling around the angel blade in its throat and makes quick work of decapitating it.

Cas doesn't recover quick enough, however, and the red-headed vamp has him sprawled back on the ground after slamming into him full force. Cas throws the vamp off of him because whatever else he is, he has been a warrior for an uncountable number of years and he's still strong, even if now it's only a human strength and not a heavenly one. For all that, he is only human and the odds are still two against one. He sidesteps around Leather Jacket and spins on one foot to cleanly slice through its neck.

The redhead is back on top of him, though, and he's not quite fast enough judging by the blood now seeping into Cas's once white dress shirt. Damn it if that thing doesn't have _claws_ of some sort. That's a new one. The vamp has fashioned itself Freddy Krueger claws, for goodness sake. He can't help but think that Dean would be oddly impressed by that. But now is not the time to dive into memories of _Nightmare on Elm Street_ movie marathons. In the end, Cas somehow gets his angel blade jammed through the last vamp's throat. He rips it out and slices cleanly through the bone and sinew of the neck.

Cas gets to work shoving the bodies and heads in the trunk of the car, carefully separated just in case. The value of a large trunk was something else he'd learned from the Winchesters, and part of the reason he loved this car, no matter how many “pimp car” jokes he'd been subjected to. He's still bleeding from where those metal claws have sliced into his stomach, and he knows he needs to do something. Cas finds where he's stashed some military-grade compression bandages in the backseat, the ones Dean taught him how to use. He unbuttons the now bloodstained white shirt and on it goes. That's good enough for now, he has other priorities at the moment. He drives to an overgrown field about five minutes outside of town and starts depositing the bodies into a hole he's already dug. Salt and fire take care of the rest.

Blood is now seeping outside the bandage, probably from all the movement and physical exertion. There's no help for it. Cas drives himself to the hospital, all the while trying not to think how increasingly light-headed he's becoming. At least he makes it inside the ER door before passing out.

****

“Hey, glad to see you're back in the land of the living,” Sam says, lightly punching Cas on the shoulder.

“Hey, Sam.”

“So how are you feeling? You were in and out there for a while.”

“I don't know. I'm a little stiff. Mostly just sore. When did you get here?”

“Couple of hours ago. Apparently I'm the emergency contact in your phone.” Silence stretches out between them for a few minutes. “So … Not to ambush you while you're healing, but … Why didn't you call for backup, man?”

“I had it in hand.”

“Uh huh. You call this 'in hand'? Dude, you could have died. You almost bled out. Why didn't you call me?”

“You don't hunt anymore.”

“Okay. Assuming that my three-month-long retirement has made me completely useless, you still could have called Dean.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Cas flops his head to the other side of the pillow. Trying to explain it would only make it worse and he can't quite meet Sam's eye right now.

“Hey, look at me,” Sam says gently. “Why not?”

“Because it's Dean, okay?” The bitterness comes out like venom and Cas just wants to be anywhere but here right now. Because now he's exposed for what he is, a pathetic wretch still in love with someone who clearly doesn't want him.

How do you even begin to explain that love is sometimes desolation? That it's fire and death and drowning? You can't. All you can do is try to stay as close to the eye of the hurricane as you can. Trying to voice that would take too much. If Cas even tried everything would spill over and pour out and he would never get back together again. He's only a fallen angel, after all.

“Still?” It's tender and quiet. Cas still won't look at him, but he knows there's compassion and pity in those eyes.

_Forever._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to expand it into three chapters. The third will be up soon, hopefully.


End file.
